move over New Hampshire, here comes MySpace

Paul writes...

I noted this with interest..."MySpace to hold presidential primary". This will happen on Jan 1st/2nd 2008, a couple of weeks before the 'real' primaries get under way. Each MySpace user will be asked to vote for their favourite candidate, providing some for m of indication about potential voting patterns.

Of course this is not without it's problems. MySpace is plagued by duplicate ID's and no understanding of how representative it's voting base will be. Also, millions of the ID's are based outside of the US. Techcrunch thinks that perhaps FaceBook would be a better vehicle for this - they can tie their user base to being of college age (so at or approaching voting age) and limit it to the US.

But, one of the interesting angles would be how the International user base felt about the candidates. After all the US drives much of our global economy and we've all felt the effects of the Bush administration. So, why not canvass the opinion of the non-US users? Break down the results and give an insight that most pollsters would kill to get hold of.

Experimental at this stage, fraight with inconsistencies over the 'validity' of the users and the results will be pulled to pieces, but the shape of things to come? Why shouldn't these huge social networks be tapped into to give an insight into the views of their user base...after all as TechCrunch also note - if MySpace was a country, it would be the 11th largest in the world (presumably by population).